Scope and Content Note

Clifton's prose subseries includes a range of book length and
short works from 1969-2001. The book-length works (Subseries 2.2a)
are comprised of her published and unpublished children's stories
and her memoir Generations, written in 1976.
Clifton's children's books are thematically centered on issues of
race, changing family dynamics, death, bullying from peers, etc.
Among her published children's books, Clifton's most widely known
are her Everett Anderson series, stories that detail the coming of
age of a young African American boy. In addition to the typescript
drafts of her children's fiction, the subseries also includes
illustration proofs from the multiple illustrators who
collaborated with her on various children's book projects. Also in
this series are Clifton's unpublished children's stories. Similar
to her published children's books, these stories facilitate
children's understanding of the particular life changes associated
with growing older. This subseries of book length works also
includes the personal notes, research materials, and typescript
drafts of her memoir, Generations, written early in
her career and detailing the lives of her mother's and father's
families.

Clifton's other prose (Subseries 2.2b) features a range of short
works, including essays, interviews, short stories, speeches, book
reviews, poem translations and spirit writing. Many of Clifton's
essays and short stories were published in popular magazines, such
as Essence and Redbook, and focus on
personal and familial struggles. Researchers will also find
numerous interview transcripts, and Clifton's translation of two
poems, "Africa" and "Black Woman," from French into English. A
limited number of Clifton's book reviews and speeches are also
included in this subseries, as well as translations by others of Clifton's poetry.

The last section of this subseries (2.3c) is comprised of
Clifton's spirit writing, spanning from roughly the mid 1970s to
1980s. Spirit writing, generically defined as the practice of
unconscious writing with no regard to what is actually being
transcribed, was used by Clifton more specifically to communicate
with the spirit world. Clifton's spirit writing includes book
length drafts in with explanations of how she came to spirit
channeling, descriptions of her connections with the dead, and
transcriptions of poems Clifton claims to have been passed to her
from now dead poets.

Arrangement Note

Organized into three subseries: (2.3a) Book length works, (2.3b)
Other prose and poetry translations, and (2.3c) Spirit writing.